Hard drive failure?

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speedlever

Limp Gawd
Joined
Sep 29, 2006
Messages
447
Got a call from my MIL the other day with computer problems. This one has me scratching my head.

First, she tells me the computer (about a year old Dell) wouldn't shut down. (normal XP/home.sp2 setup and shut down using start/shutdown). The next morning the machine is still running and she can't shut it down using the OS, tried the power button (but she didn't know to hold the button in for 4 seconds) and ended up shutting down by turning off the UPS.

Now the computer won't boot... comes us saying the HAL.dll file is missing. Oh oh. This doesn't sound good.

So I go over and sure enough, duplicate what she's getting. So I try a recovery console: chkdsk /r. No luck. It fails at 25% with one or more unrecoverable problems.

I tried Drive Fitness 4.10 and it also says there's an unrecoverable problem but that the drive is non-IBM or Hitachi. So I try the Seagate tools, but can't even get that to run past the legal page.

I tried Fred Langa's XP non-destructive OS repair:
http://tinyurl.com/hutg5
but it indicates the sole HD has 3 partitions with two unformatted ones.

Sounds to me like the HD is hosed.

Any thoughts? Would it be worth a try to put this HD in a 2nd computer and see if I can recover any files? Is the HD likely toast or just the file system?
 
you won't know until you get the drive in a bootable system.
I've foudn that Get Data Back for NTFS works wonders as long as the drive is not dead.
 
Yeah... makes sense. Thanks for the tip on GBD. I wan't aware of that.

If the drive is recognizable in another system, I can recover the data files there. If that is true, how would GBD be of benefit?
 
If the other computer can see the files you're golden.
If the computer can see the drive but not the partitions (for example)
GDB can recover the files.
 
Ah, I see.

Well I dove into the computers a little while ago. The older computer that runs is all IDE. The new one with the problem has a SATA drive. Sigh.

I'm sure there's some sort of SATA/IDE converter out there. Guess I'll hafta dig one up.
 
Update:

I took the drive to a local shop.. and they were unable to rescue the drive with the special tools they have. So I replaced the drive with a couple of new drives.

I put a 320Gb Seagate 7200.10 drive and a 320 Gb WD 3200 AAKS drive in her computer. They are running fine, but hot, imo.

Speedfan 4.33 reports low to mid 50 *C... which is about 20*-25*C more than my drives run in my box. Then again, I have a couple of 92mm Nexus fans blowing on my 3 drives.

Her computer is a Dell 5150, P4 with a Radeon X300 VGA card, a couple of optical drives and a multimedia panel. I see no open fan headers available. How warm can these drives run without compromising longevity?

Any thoughts on how to provide more cooling? I see no headers at all for cooling fans anywhere (except for the CPU).

I think she should replace the case and mobo with something that will provide more cooling options like my Antec Solo case. But it would be cheaper if I could come up with an alternative cooling solution with her existing system.
 
A cooler on the backside would be fine you will just have to find one that will fit.
 
Thought I'd update this old thread with the latest news. I put in 2 new drives in her system:
1) Seagate 7200.10 320gb SATA (XP home/sp2)
2) WD 3200AAKS 320gb SATA (backup)

I put an 80mm fan behind the drive cage which lowered the drive temps 10*C to the low to mid-40's (*C).

A couple of days ago I went over to do some maintenance on the system and found a BSOD followed by a failure to read disk.. requiring a CAD. Did the CAD and had the same error again. I ran the Dell HD diags and found that HD 1 failed with a code 7 (whatever that means).

Took the drive to a local computer store and they said the drive was recognized but was corrupted.

I wonder if it's worth reformatting and reinstalling XP... or if I should just replace it under warranty. Any thoughts?

This is really weird to have 2 Seagates fail in 2 months.

I really don't like this DELL 5150 computer. If I have time, I think I'll build her next one with a decent case that let's the HDs breathe.
 
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